I was recently engaged on a friends side by someone who has been thought hijacked by the pro-Palestinian crowd. At the risk of coming off a bit self absorbed I thought Id share one of my posts from that discussion. Let me see if perhaps I can add a little more background. State just refers to a politically autonomous power. Hence the original 13 US Colonies each became a State that then opted to devolve some of that power like the right to regulate imports and exports and the right to wage war to a federal government and thus became the United States. So thinking about a state in that context lets explore the land we are discussing. The term Palestine was used by conquerors such as the Persians, Macedonians, Romans, Turks and British to describe the territory that encompassed parts of modern day Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and even Egypt. While there were several autonomous States or Kingdoms that existed in this territory anciently the only one of these ancient people that survived as a nation even in exile is the Jewish nation that was known as Israel. Israel as a Jewish State was also by far the most powerful and recurring of these autonomous States in between the conquerors holdings. This brings us to modern times. The Jewish State and people were dispersed across the entire world first by the power of the Ceasars and later by their own quest to find places where they could live in peace. Such places were almost impossible to find either inside the Turkish Caliphate which soon controlled that land or in the courts of Europe from whence they were from time to time purged. Purged is a nice way of saying slaughtered, their property stolen and the survivors fleeing for their lives. Beginning in the early to mid 19th century many Jewish families who had now for nearly 1800 years stated next year in Jerusalem at Passover as they mourned their exile determined to take matters into their own hands and begin the planning and hard work necessary to regain their nation. To accomplish this families with barely enough food to eat saved every extra penny they could and placed it into funds to acquire the land of their ancestors. As this land was at the time controlled by the Turks they often had to pay 10X its value or what others such as Moslem Arabs had to pay. Still they paid what was necessary and took ownership of large swathes of territory not by force but by commerce. They immediately established institutions for charity, for learning, for industry and enterprise, they planted farms and gave life to a region that had previously been used as grazing lands for nomadic passers through. This movement was called Zionism and has very little to do with an extremist religious position and is rather a business and secular movement of a persecuted and hounded people to reestablish its National identity and to be able to mutually defend themselves against a world gone mad. As a matter of fact for some time the movement was divided over acquiring this nation in its own place of origin or in some part of Africa. Can you imagine how much worse their current condition would be had they established themselves in a location where they had no historic claims? Moshe Dayan one of Israels great Generals and a man who was reared in the fertile soil of Israel long before it became a State wrote of the early years in the British protectorate of Palestine. He wrote of the turf wars as land purchased by Jews were fenced and farmed. The nomadic Arab sheep herders would then try to take down the fences and allow their livestock to graze. There is no marked difference between this type of conflict between Jews and Arabs living or passing through Palestine then the range wars between farmers and ranchers in the American west. And, just like in the American west Moshe talks of battling the herders by day to protect the farm and then celebrating with each other at night their weddings. There were at that time no such people as a Palestinian people. There were however and had been for centuries Jewish people. There were both Jewish and Arabian people living in a territory that conquerors chose to refer to as Palestine though the former were stationary by large and the latter were nomadic and were in and out of pieces of that land that extended far into present day Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. When the horrors of what I can only hope was the final purge, the holocaust, came to light after World War II, it became clear to the Jewish people that their only defense would be their own State and so with the help of Britain and the US, in large part because the help the Jewish people in Palestine rendered the allies in maintaining the Middle East whose Arab majority sided instead with the Nazis, Israel was born. Immediately the surrounding Arab States dispelled their nomadic tribes on their borders under promise of help in expelling the Jews and creating a Palestinian State on their lands. From the very beginning Israel was clear, as long as she could live in peace on the lands she had rightfully acquired by both her money and her blood she would live peacefully with her neighbors. Her neighbors opted for war and after each defeat moaned and complained about the territory lost. Frequently Israel returned large swaths of territory. Rather then sell back the lands her people had bought at inflated prices she asked her people to leave them to others in hopes that this exchange would result in peace. Each peaceful move was greeted with yet another barrage of rocket attacks, kidnappings and suicide bombings. With the help of both Israel and the rest of the world the so called Palestinian was given Billions of Dollars but unlike the earned Dollars of the Jews which were carefully invested in Infrastructure, Universities, the Arts, Industry and Farming, the dollars given the Palestinians were squandered by their leaders and used only to create terrorist infrastructure with the bulk of it going into their own private accounts to build multi-billion dollar reservoirs of personal wealth. You are correct about one thing it is the newly named Palestinian people that suffer but not because of Israel but because of their own people whether their neighbors that cast them out under false promises they could not deliver or their leaders who are selling them out to maintain their own wealth and power. The only solution is an internal solution and the only path that Israel has is to defend itself against violence until such time that the newly minted Palestinians overthrow their own corrupt leaders and break the bonds of the brainwashing these leaders subjected them to. Their are many, I would propose the majority of the people of Israel who would gladly reach out the hand of friendship and enterprise to a peaceful and peace loving people on their own borders.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Jul 2014 13:28:09 +0000
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